hot take: token spend can be used a honey pot, especially when compared to what you deliver. spend accordingly!
Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
51–60 of 167 posts
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#52Now feels like a very good time to be a small team of experienced developers who can largely work on stuff by themselves and not a corporation of hundreds of developers of varying abilities all now trying to show how much code they can generate and how many tokens they can burn.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently: * In App Hotel bookings in partnership with Expedia. * Travel Mode with suggestions on where to eat and visit when travelling. * Eats for the way - your driver picks up a takeaway for you to eat while they drive you to your destination. * Voice bookings using AI and speech to text. How did we ever live without them!
> Eats for the way - your driver picks up a takeaway for you to eat while they drive you to your destination. This seems like the kind of terrible idea that an LLM might have come up with. I'm pretty sure most drivers do not want people eating (especially a whole meal) in their car, and I can't imagine a lot of instances where you're calling an Uber and don't have time to get yourself food, but don't mind waiting an…
> I can't imagine a lot of instances where you're calling an Uber and don't have time to get yourself food
Recently I got a car to take me to the train station and picked up food on the way. Seems pretty common to me. Of course, I didn't need or want it charged as a premium feature in the app.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if Uber really did double developer productivity, would it translate to quarterly results? Ultimately they make money selling rides, not selling software. The Uber app is mature and adding new features is unlikely to significantly increase sales. Writing 2x more code doesn't translate to 2x more revenue unless it results in 2x more rides.
Lowering costs to run the infra would show up as increased profits without any change in rides.
Do you really need AI for that? Seems like the thing any existing engineering team could do if it was prioritized.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine added some pretty extensive iOS UI tests to a keystone feature hit by millions every month. They'd been kicking the can down the road for years, trying to fit it in their roadmap, and with Claude running overnight they were able to bang out the whole suite in a week. I'm not sure how it would show up in quarterly results.
I see these kinds of stories here a lot, and I'm curious whether they reflect a steady stream of need for AI coding, or whether a lot of companies have a burst of AI-appropriate coding work now that the technology is available and then will have a smaller need going forward. Is it like the stereotypical dad who rents a power washer, powerwashes every exposed surface on his property, and then doesn't need to do any po…
> or whether a lot of companies have a burst of AI-appropriate coding work now that the technology is available and then will have a smaller need going forward
For the product my friend works on, it's definitely the latter. I definitely don't expect this party to last forever.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if Uber really did double developer productivity, would it translate to quarterly results? Ultimately they make money selling rides, not selling software. The Uber app is mature and adding new features is unlikely to significantly increase sales. Writing 2x more code doesn't translate to 2x more revenue unless it results in 2x more rides.
Lowering costs to run the infra would show up as increased profits without any change in rides.
Would it? How much of Uber’s cost is software infrastructure vs paying humans?
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see these kinds of stories here a lot, and I'm curious whether they reflect a steady stream of need for AI coding, or whether a lot of companies have a burst of AI-appropriate coding work now that the technology is available and then will have a smaller need going forward. Is it like the stereotypical dad who rents a power washer, powerwashes every exposed surface on his property, and then doesn't need to do any po…
So far where I work its the Instant Pot, at least for the non-devs. We rolled out Claude & Cowork to the masses after a brief pilot. It was about a solid month and a half of heavy usage and then suddenly usage fell off a cliff. Once it stopped being a cool new toy, people just didn't find a use for it. A few mundane things got automated, but these were just back office admin type work. Nothing that's going to show on…
> So far where I work its the Instant Pot, at least for the non-devs. We rolled out Claude & Cowork to the masses after a brief pilot. It was about a solid month and a half of heavy usage and then suddenly usage fell off a cliff. Once it stopped being a cool new toy, people just didn't find a use for it.
Your employer is doing it wrong. You need usage surveillance with sanctions for low/declining use, then people won't stop using it.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see these kinds of stories here a lot, and I'm curious whether they reflect a steady stream of need for AI coding, or whether a lot of companies have a burst of AI-appropriate coding work now that the technology is available and then will have a smaller need going forward. Is it like the stereotypical dad who rents a power washer, powerwashes every exposed surface on his property, and then doesn't need to do any po…
That’s been my theory - there’s some low hanging fruit in every environment where AI knocks it out of the park. Then complex brownfield reality (coupled with non-technical factors) rears its head and the stunning productivity gains are nowhere near to be seen. That’s the explanation how you can have both the anecdotes of amazing AI productivity and rigorous studies showing anything from actual loss of productivity to…
I think this is directionally right.
The code AI produces is not created equally, not even close.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine added some pretty extensive iOS UI tests to a keystone feature hit by millions every month. They'd been kicking the can down the road for years, trying to fit it in their roadmap, and with Claude running overnight they were able to bang out the whole suite in a week. I'm not sure how it would show up in quarterly results.
I see these kinds of stories here a lot, and I'm curious whether they reflect a steady stream of need for AI coding, or whether a lot of companies have a burst of AI-appropriate coding work now that the technology is available and then will have a smaller need going forward. Is it like the stereotypical dad who rents a power washer, powerwashes every exposed surface on his property, and then doesn't need to do any po…
Some measures should have real, tangible, concrete numbers; others should have “my friends are saying”/“you are blind if you are not seeing it” vibing.
Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'
#60There's also the issue that in any large-ish org, code production is hardly ever the bottleneck.